lung cancer is generally based on the patient's genetic mutations. For patients without suitable targeted drugs, chemotherapy combined with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors and other immunotherapy treatment will be adopted, and this treatment plan may cause some serious adverse reactions.
. Are you going to stop the medicine? Or continue to use the medicine and look forward to the treatment to take effect?
Immune related adverse events
Any treatment measures will produce adverse reactions, and immunotherapy is no exception. Although immunotherapy is relatively tolerant, if the adverse reaction is serious, it may also be necessary to stop the drug, or even permanently stop the use of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors.
Studies have shown that if adverse reactions occur in lung cancer patients who use immunotherapy alone, the patient's survival will be better and the quality of life will be improved accordingly.
However, only patients with high PD-L1 expression can use immunotherapy alone. Most patients do not belong to the high PD-L1 expression population, so these patients often treat it through chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy. So, does the adverse reactions occur during chemotherapy and immunotherapy also indicate a better survival period of the patient? Let’s take a look at the latest research below.
adverse reaction events in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy indicate good efficacy
This study included 93 patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, all of which used chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy.
Figure 1. Overview and characteristics of immune-related adverse events
As shown in the figure above, the probability of adverse events occurring with chemotherapy and immunotherapy is indeed not low. About 43% of patients experienced at least one immune-related adverse event (irAE) during treatment.
Similar to patients who were immunotherapy alone, the median overall survival of patients with at least one immune-related adverse event (irAE) was 16.6 months, while the median overall survival of patients without adverse events was 11.1 months.
Figure 2. The relationship between immune-related adverse events and patient survival
This means that if adverse events occur during chemotherapy and immunotherapy, patients are more likely to benefit from the treatment and have a longer survival period.
enlightenment
Therefore, adverse reaction events that occur during chemotherapy and immunotherapy are both joy and sorrow, and we should treat them objectively. Adverse reactions often indicate that the therapeutic drugs have an effect in the body, and the immune system is activated and mobilized to fight cancer, which increases the possibility of patients benefiting from treatment.
However, cancer degree reminds everyone that you should not take adverse reaction events lightly, thus relaxing the handling strategies for adverse reaction events. If the adverse reaction event is more serious, the patient may not be able to tolerate follow-up treatment well. He should take timely measures, communicate with the attending doctor as soon as possible, handle the adverse reactions well, continue to persist in treatment, and strive to maximize the benefit from the treatment, so as to achieve long-term survival.
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References:
Lindsey B. Shantzer et al, Immune-Related Adverse Events in Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated with Immune Checkpoint Inhibition in Combination with Chemotherapy: A Brief Report, Clinical Lung Cancer, 2022.
